


Beep Beep

by cissues



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcohol, Anxiety Attacks, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Hospitals, M/M, Post-Chapter 2, Stan isn't dead, because I say so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 12:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20948573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cissues/pseuds/cissues
Summary: He was able to play with the rhythm of his heart, after some practice. After the boredom of a dull hospital room, devoid of Losers, devoid of video games or monster movies or Coke-bottle glasses or stupid Hawaiian shirts or stinky, socked feet or grimy hideouts underneath woods.He would close his eyes and he would imagine his heart quickening.





	Beep Beep

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK WITH A NEW FANDOM!
> 
> Wanted to throw my hat into the ring of post chapter 2 fix-its. It's a lot longer than I expected to and it is un-beta'd and mostly un-edited. Also mostly written while I was drunk so there's that.
> 
> I have a twitter now that I would love to buff out with more IT accounts. I can be found at @peachieweech on Twitter and cacaesthesia on tumblr. I will probably write more IT stuff so if there are any prompts to throw my way then please do.
> 
> Enjoy!

The beep of the hospital machines is what pulls him out, in the end.

He had been so certain, so confident in the fact that he had died that, for a moment, he told himself  _ this can’t be what Heaven sounds like _ . And then the next thought was,  _ Ah, it’s because I’m in Hell. _

He had been so  _ sure _ .

The tear of skin had been so visceral, so real and so painful and then there was just  _ nothing _ and Eddie had assumed,  _ rightly so _ , that this was the end. He had looked at the faces of all of the Losers as he tossed his inhaler into the fire and decided, in that moment, that he would die for them. He would die for any of them. And then he looked at Richie as he flicked his thumb to send the coin flipping through the air and he realized that, perhaps, he was more ready to die for one than he was for all.

The sentiment remained, however, and he had.

Died, that is.

Or at least he had thought, until the grotesque sounds of hospital machines had pierced his ears, the ones he had memorized as a kid.

_ Beep. _

_ Beep. _

_ Beep. _

_ Beep beep, Richie. _

He used to play a game with himself when his mother had committed him to a hospital room for minor scrapes, for a three minute long hyperventilation, for God knows what else.

_ Not God. _

_ Her. _

He was able to play with the rhythm of his heart, after some practice. After the boredom of a dull hospital room, devoid of Losers, devoid of video games or monster movies or Coke-bottle glasses or stupid Hawaiian shirts or stinky, socked feet or grimy hideouts underneath woods.

He would close his eyes and he would imagine his heart quickening,

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

And then he would imagine his heart slowing down.

_ Beep _

  
  


_ Beep _

  
  


_ Beep _

Until a nurse was notified and he was kept for another day to run more tests.

As his heart had begun to speed up, however, his mind would conjure images that it associated with the heightened heart rate and the anxiety and the loneliness and it would show him images of brown, of dirty fingernails, of Coke-bottle-glasses--

“ _ Eddie- _ ”

Of too-huge grins, of ice cream, of scraped knees--

“ _ Eddie- _ ”

Of too-long hugs, of absent-minded touches, of off-color remarks--

“ _ EDDIE! _ ”

He awoke.

He was alive.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


It took awhile for Eddie to come-to in any significant way. Later he was informed of the intermittent moments of consciousness and the panic when he had flatlined -  _ again _ \- and the surgeries upon surgeries that he knew from experience that he would have a hard time fighting his insurance company on.  _ You would think a risk-analyst would have better coverage. _ But for now his world was pain and it was beeps and it was too-many faces telling him too-many things that he couldn’t understand. He had answered the questions as best as he could, now backed with the memories of his fabricated ailments:

“ _ No, no, not asthma... anxiety? _ ”

“ _ Penicillin is fine, no tests. _ ”

“ _ Just cats, I think… just cats. _ ”

“ _ Richie? _ ”

“ _ Risk analyst - no, I can’t remember- _ ”

“ _ Am I dead-- _ ”

“ _ I don’t know, I don’t know… _ ”

“ _ No, please don’t call her. _ ”

“ _ Please, don’t call her. _ ”

“ _ Please _ .”

“ _ Richie… call… _ ”

And then he was awake and he was alone.

The  _ beep, beep, beep _ s made him feel suddenly unsafe and unsure of who he was and what he needed and he flailed his limbs to turn it off, but the I.V. catheter yanked at his hand and drew out this sort of ache that was unlike the pain of before. It was dull and it was meaningless, but he knew well enough to keep that hand still as he swiped at the monitors to his right.  _ The nurses say you have good veins in your left arm. Easy veins. You should be proud. _ They were perhaps not as frantic as he assumed them to be and once he realized what they were, he settled back into the bed and began to take stock.

He was not dead.

Or, he was and he was in his own personal Hell, perpetually stuck in a hospital, his mother requesting more and more tests, more and more medications, insisting more and more that he was fragile and easily broken.

After several long moments he concluded that  _ no _ , he was just in a hospital. A regular one, not a Hellish one. Although, all hospitals were Hellish if you asked him.

It took an uncertain but seemingly long time before a nurse wandered in and realized he was awake. She made a surprised sort of noise, glancing over her shoulder at the door as if deciding if she should alert a doctor or not -  _ she should, she absolutely should _ \- before she sidled up to his bedside with a sweet smile.

“Mr. Kaspbrak,” she said and her voice was the kind that he’d heard from his grandparents on his dads side, the ones who had been smoking since they were twelve and whose vocal chords were irreparably damaged. “Good afternoon.”

“Hi,” he said, lamely, and he noticed his voice sounded very much the same as hers. Her eyes softened in that way that nurses did when they realize that they’re talking to a fully-conscious person who is very hurt. He hates that look with a burning passion.

“Do you know where you are?” She asks, testing him in a way he’s not sure she’s qualified to do.

“Um, a hospital?” He tried, again lamely, but he wasn’t sure what other answer he was supposed to have. She glanced down at the chart in her hands and twisted her mouth before looking up again. “You’re at St. Raphael Hospital in Derry, Maine. Do you remember anything about that?”

He screwed up his face - he could feel it twist in his mouth and in his brow - and shrugged. “I remember answering some questions, kind of,” he answered after a moment, “but they were asked under extenuating circumstances and therefore I request to hear the record before I decide to sue this place into the ground for trying to get insurance information from a barely-conscious patient.”

The nurse’s eyes widened and she looked back to the chart, scanning it for far too long before she straightened, smiling in that way that nurses do when they know that they’re out of their league.

“I’ll go get the doctor.”

And she did.

The doctor was a sweet-enough woman. A younger doctor, so not someone he would have already been acquainted with, which offered some amount of relief. She read back his answers to their general questions - allergies, current medications, insurance - to which he made amends that she scrawled down hastily, looking only slightly harried, until she came to the question that he had been both waiting for and dreading.

“Your emergency contact… you told us not to contact her?”

Myra. Probably the best decision he made in those barely conscious hours, but now he had little excuse as to why he didn’t want her contacted.

“Um, yeah. That’s fine. Did I request a new emergency contact?” He asked because it’s standard procedure. They had to have an emergency contact.

“Yes, you did, Mr. Kaspbrak. He’s in the waiting room right now. A Mr. Tozier? You kept saying his first name and wouldn’t tell us the last, but you have had quite the entourage keeping tabs on you and we were able to find him fairly quickly. He never left the hospital, so it worked to our advantage.”

Of course.

He wasn’t surprised, necessarily, by his mostly-unconscious choice. Richie was the only person he ever wanted at his bedside, a fact he only realized once he saw his face at the Jade Dragon only several days ago. Still, there was a sick feeling in his stomach and he nodded, making a hand towards the place he knew they kept the puke-bags. The doctor realized what he was gesturing to quickly and grabbed one off of the rack and handed it to him. He immediately vomited a concerning mixture of red and white into it, the pale blue of the bag making him inappropriately think of patriotism. He finished and sort of held it away from himself before the doctor took it with a gloved hand and disposed of it.

“He’s here?” He asked, finally, his voice back to its previous rasp. She hummed and when he looked up he caught the tail end of a nod.

“He’s been here the whole time. They all have. Quite a group you have there. They’ve been sleeping in the lobby since you got here.” She smiled at him in a way that doctors do when they’re relieved they won’t have to sign you up for suicide watch. He knew the look. It’s the same one that was given to him when Bill called his room every three hours once when he had an asthma -  _ anxiety _ attack once after a bee had stung him and he ended up passing out. It was the same one that the doctor had given him when they revealed that a young boy had been harassing his receptionists for an entire day to let him into Eddie’s hospital room. This had happened more than once. It had all happened more than once.

“When can they come in?” Was his next question and it was, by far, the most important.

The doctor looked at his chart, then back at him and then at the door and then she shrugged -  _ thank God for fresh med students _ .

“Now, I guess. You’ve been conscious and lucid for several hours and one of them  _ is _ your emergency contact.”

His heart began to pound until the doctor tucked her chart under her arm and said,

“Sorry,  _ new _ emergency contact.”

And then she left.

It took approximately 800 and thirty three beeps before the door to Eddie’s hospital room creaked open and a pile of orange curls peaked into the room.

“Knock knock.” A quiet, smiling voice asked and Eddie laughed, prompting the door to open wide and the Losers poured into his room, filling it to the brim with sunshine.

It was, at first, slightly overwhelming. Everyone’s hands were on him, touching his hair and his face and his arms, as if checking to make sure he was actually,  _ truly _ alive. Then they backed away and perched themselves on various surfaces. Bill and Stan were sitting at the foot of his bed, one on either side like gargoyles protecting him. Bev pressed herself against his right arm and kept her hand against the top of his head, stroking the hair there lovingly. Ben sat beside her, barely on the bed and placing most of his weight against her side and he knew what that meant before they even made eye contact. Mike was on his other side, not sitting but watching his vitals carefully between glances at the rest of the group.

Richie… Richie, however, was standing against the wall as if it was supporting the entirety of his weight. It wasn’t the carefree way Eddie suddenly remembered him nonchalantly leaning against the brick of the back of the school, cigarette in hand and foot resting against the wall behind him. It was slumped and his face was blank where the others were overcome with joy. Eddie looked at him, but Richie was not looking at anything.

“What happened?” Ben asked first, his voice hushed and tentative, as if he wasn’t allowed to speak of it. The rest of them tensed for a moment before relaxing when Eddie simply shrugged.

“You all know better than me.” He said with a lack of knowing that he was less at peace with than he sounded. “I just remember… there were a lot of doctors. That’s all I can remember. A lot of questions.”

“But you’re… you can see us now, so you’re okay?” Mike’s voice was hushed and hopeful and sudden beside him and Eddie instinctively lifted his I.V. shackled hand to meet his. Mike noticed and pressed his fingers against Eddie’s bicep.

“Yeah, I guess so. I remember them saying a lot about surgeries, and asking about penicillin so I’m guessing whatever it was was a success and I’m good to fucking go.” He tried to smile but it felt tight, his skin pulling on his left cheek. He remembered, with sudden clarity, the wound that was healing there.

There was a collective sigh of relief from everyone at his bedside. He looked back at Richie, arms crossed over his chest and jaw set tight, and realized that he hadn’t relaxed.

“I’m fine. They said I’m fine.”

He said it at Richie, but he heard a few sobs hidden in laughter around his bedside.

Richie didn’t move.

He looked… bad. His face was riddled with an uneven stubble and his hair was matted and sticking up in places. His clothes looked relatively clean, but rumpled, and Eddie wondered if the group had gone back to change, to shower and scrub Niebolt from their skin. Richie looked clean from dirt and blood, but the grit of an all-nighter, of ill-fitting sleeping arrangements and cheap coffee emanated from him.

Bev was the first one to look over her shoulder at Richie and Eddie could practically feel the realization wash over her, though realization at what (besides Richie being an unfeeling asshole as always), he wasn’t sure.

“I think…” she began, though her voice was strained, “we should probably let you rest.”

The rest of the Losers hummed and sighed and patted him reluctantly, but they all assumed the protocol of these sorts of things. They began to file out, giving him one-armed and careful hugs as they left. Bev kissed his forehead and Stan squeezed his ankle almost too-tight. Richie turned to leave, but Bev had already shut the door after her - the last one to leave.

Richie’s eyes widened and he moved to open to door again when Eddie rasped, “wait.”

The pause was immediate.

Richie was frozen before he melted slowly back against the wall, leaning on it heavily as if he could barely stand.

“Can you come sit?” Eddie asked, gesturing at the couch and the armchair positioned beside him, but mostly at the expanse of hospital bed that his legs were not taking up. Richie opted for the armchair, sort of stumbling towards it before collapsing as if he hadn’t sat in days.

He didn’t say anything.

“So, I guess you’re my emergency contact now.” Eddie tried to joke. Richie’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t say anything.

“Richie…”

“They called her, you know.”

Richie’s voice was absolutely wrecked. If Eddie thought that his voice sounded like an 80 year old smoker than Richie sounded like the dead.

“What?” He asked, genuinely out of the loop in a way he was not comfortable with.

Richie pushed his fingers into his unruly hair and sighed, leaning backwards against the chair until his face was towards the ceiling.

“They called Myra first.”

Oh.

“They told her that you were in surgery, that you were critical. She… she came, Eddie.”

Oh.

_ Fuck _ .

“What… what happened?” Eddie asked, his usual high-energy speech pattern had been shot by pain medication and trauma.

“She came. She insisted on seeing you but they told her… they told  _ us _ that you refused. You were out of surgery and you were apparently really out of it but you… told them not to let her in. The nurse looked so fucking freaked out, Eddie. She looked like a kid in the middle of a divorce. She was shaking. She showed Myra these papers and she just… she left. Then she told me that I… I was your new emergency contact and I just… I didn’t know what to do.”

Richie scrubbed at his eyes. “Your  _ wife _ was here, Eddie. You didn’t want to see her but you kept saying my name over and over again. What the fuck… I get that… I get that shit was fucked but she’s your  _ wife _ and you just remembered I existed three fucking days ago, Eddie. That’s a lot of goddamn pressure to put on someone. That’s a lot of expectation. She was a huge bitch about it, too.”

Eddie couldn’t help the laugh that ripped from him. It turned into a violent cough and Richie was suddenly out of his armchair and onto the bed, eyes wide behind his (broken, Eddie just realized) glasses.

“Are you okay?” Richie breathed, hands hovering over his body as if he couldn’t tell where to put them. Eddie blew the rest of the residual shaking of his lungs into his fist and waved Richie off, frowning. “‘M fine.” He murmured. Richie’s eyes were still bugged, but he relaxed slightly into himself, pushing his fingers under his glasses and pressing delicately at his own eyelids.

“How’re you, Richie?” Eddie asked after a long, long moment. His sense of time was still likely inaccurate, but he could feel the moments tick away and the  _ beep beep beep _ s giving him some sense of the seconds slipping by.

“I’m… Eddie…” Richie was having a hard time articulating and it was a sudden realization that his hands were shaking, and so was his body. In an instant Eddie realized he was crying.

“Eddie, you died.” Richie finally said and Eddie’s breath caught in his throat.

“You died.  _ Twice _ . There was a doctor that came and told us everything, kept us updated. I only went back to the townhouse to change but I’ve been here for… for days. I’m your… your fucking  _ emergency contact _ . You signed a piece of  _ paper _ that told them not to contact Myra again. I was the only… the only one with any amount of… of  _ legal power,  _ Eddie,” and then Richie was sobbing and Eddie genuinely did not know what to do. He felt thirteen again, suddenly. Richie was scraped up and bruised from a Bowers attack and crying and he wasn’t being funny, he wasn’t making it into a joke because he was  _ hurt. _ He’d hugged his knees to his chest and rocked back and forth and Eddie was hurt too, but Richie had been the one who had been pushed around, he’d stood up for Eddie and in turn gotten the shit end of  _ both _ of their sticks. It’s what Richie had been doing for years, for the entire time they had been friends. He took on as much as he could because he hated seeing his friends in pain, so much so that he made himself the one who took it all away.

So Eddie reached out his hand and placed it, gently, on Richie’s knee. The only thing close enough for him to touch. He looked,  _ really _ looked at his friend as his shoulders shook and his knuckles whitened as they balled in on themselves and his legs lifted off of the chair in an effort to make himself as small and as invulnerable as possible.

“I saw you fucking  _ die _ , Eddie.”

The words were strained and they were stuttered through hard breaths and compressed lungs but they hit Eddie hard in their entirety. His hand on Richie’s knee tightened and he let out a sob that had been building in his throat.

“ _ I’m so sorry. _ ” He breathed through the tears. Richie shook his head violently back and forth.

“That’s the worst fucking part, Eds,” he said, his face crumpled and twisted and ugly in a way that could only be the worst part of genuine, “it wasn’t even your fucking  _ fault _ . You were so fucking brave, so fucking… so fucking  _ heroic _ . You  _ saved _ me. You saved all of us. I don’t have anyone to blame for this… this feeling. The thing I’m feeling. It’s like loss, but you didn’t  _ die, _ you didn’t even fucking  _ die _ but I feel like you did. I watched you die, Eds, I had you blood in my hands and I carried your fucking  _ body _ out and it was getting cold and it was everywhere… the blood was fucking  _ everywhere _ .”

He was shaking so violently that Eddie was afraid he would somehow start convulsing and they would have to bring a nurse in to bring him to, but he was just crying. It was the hardest he had ever seen someone cry. It was more than tears it was a full-bodied mourning for someone who wasn’t even dead.

“Richie,” he said, quietly as to not frighten him. Richie didn’t respond, he just stared endlessly at his own fists, maybe at the fist that Eddie had made in the denim at his knee.

“ _ Richie-” _

“Why me, Eddie? She was so mad at me, she looked like something It would have made to torture me. She was terrifying. She shouted at me for so long. The security guys had to haul her out. She asked me what was so special and I couldn’t  _ tell her _ . I  _ don’t know _ . We were friends when we were in middle school but  _ fuck _ , Eds, what else? There was nothing else. I couldn’t say anything, I didn’t know what to say--”

“I hate her.”

Richie’s jaw clenched shut, but he still wouldn’t look.

“I have for a while. My mom set us up. I think she wanted someone who would take care of me, someone who wouldn’t let me out of their sights and she got what she wanted. I couldn’t say no to her. Myra was there and I couldn’t say no… not to my mom. She made sure of that. I never… I never wanted her like… not like that.”

Richie finally looked at him and he could hear his heart rate.

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

“Not like what?” Richie asked and his eyes were red and his body was shaking because of how  _ worried _ he was. Myra was never worried like that. The moment he got sick she had one hundred remedies. She fermented her own fire cider, she had prescription pain meds without his name on them, she had an oversized purse with every iteration of bandage in them ( _ Like his fannypack, like his mother’s purse _ ). The moment he seemed off he was barraged with everything she could think of until she was satisfied, until he was complacent and quiet and  _ safe _ . Richie wasn’t like that. He encouraged Eddie, he gave Eddie the benefit of the doubt, but if anything happened to him, anything  _ real _ , it tore Richie up from the inside. He wanted Eddie to have a life, he wanted Eddie to prove to himself and to everyone else how actually brave he was, but he was still there when things took a turn. He was still there with bandages and off-color remarks. He was still there making sure Eddie didn’t fucking die, but he never kept it from happening. He let Eddie do that for himself.

And honestly? That meant more than any overbearance, any fussing or doting. It meant the world.

“Not like you,” and the words fell from his lips, mostly unprompted but not regretted. Richie was staring at him and he could barely breathe. He didn’t want his inhaler.

_ Knock knock _

Both men inhaled deeply and Eddie stole back his hand and Richie bowed his head, pretending to be interested in anything else.

The doctor peaked her head around the corner, eyebrows raised.

“Hi, Mr. Kaspbrak. If Mr. Tozier would like to end his visit, I have a few more legal questions for you.”

Richie left, and the doctor began to grill him about various medical necessities, the sorts of things Myra would have insisted on that he, instead, refused. Follow-ups and physical therapy that would have left him so far in the red that he wouldn’t have been able to recover from. They kept him in the hospital for several more days, but the worst of them came in the form of a lawyer holding a manila folder full of divorce paperwork.

Myra got the house. She got alimony.

Eddie didn’t care.

Richie kept visiting, but their conversations had turned to the practical and they never picked back up on the line they had left with previously. Richie seemed uncomfortable talking about Eddie’s divorce, but they had decided that Eddie would come with him to Los Angeles.

“I mean, seeing as I’m your legal guardian, I guess I have no choice.”

Richie looked better, cleaner, like he had showered and brushed his hair. His stubble was still growing, but it looked more intentional than it had before. The dark circles were still there, but they weren’t as concerning. They didn’t look like a health risk.

“Fuck you, man. My fucking lawyer could be sitting in your place right now and it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

Richie had laughed and Eddie tried not to notice how his heart monitor picked up.

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

But Richie didn’t notice, either, so they continued.

Ben and Beverly were going on some kind of fucking  _ boat trip _ together.  _ Gross _ . Mike was going on a road trip by himself. A much-needed reprise from the stuffy attic he had inhabited for nearly three decades. Stan was going back home to his family. They apparently still had a trip to  _ Cancun _ or the  _ Glapagos _ or whatever the fuck and he was still slated to go, despite everything that happened. Bill had to go back to his own wife, his own career. That just left Richie.

Richie, who had never married, whose career was careening into absolution and who owned prime real estate in one of the most expensive states to exist in the U.S. and Eddie really had no choice, looking back on it. It wasn’t that he wanted to keep being around Richie, or that he missed the camaraderie that had as kids, or that he wanted to  _ explore _ something. It was convenience. It was that L.A. had a huge job market in the insurance field and having a rent-free place to stay was nigh-unheard-of unless you were someone who could realistically abide by those “house-boy” calls on Craigslist. Eddie was forty and he was (literally) scarred and he would not make a very good house-boy. He didn’t think they actually wanted someone who knew how to disinfect a toilet.

So he and Richie boarded a plane together and before he realized what was happening he was walking through the threshold of the Tozier residence.

It was everything he had expected and more.

The place was completely sterile. This, he knew, had more to do with Richie’s consistent vacancy than it did his own personal cleanliness standards. He could smell commercial-grade cleaning supplies as soon as he stepped through the door, indicating that Richie never cancelled his personal cleaning service.

Richie, himself, looked embarrassed as he ducked through the doorway and into the foyer.

There were also a concerning lack of furniture or artwork. There was a nice sectional in front of a far too-large television and that was all Eddie could see once he rounded the corner.

Eddie threw his luggage towards the couch and marched into a hallway.

“The guest room is over there,” he said, gesturing towards a closed door that Eddie was certain hadn’t been open since he moved in. Richie, predictably, headed towards an off-room of the kitchen that was soon discovered to be the bar. Or, more accurately, a liquor dungeon.

It was windowless and dark and housed every kind of alcohol Eddie could think of and then a few more. There was a countertop that could have been a nice place to mix and pour drinks if it hadn’t also been overrun by countless bottles of whiskey and vodka.

Richie grabbed a newly cleaned tumbler and poured far more than a fingers worth into it.

“Do you wanna drink?” He asked, almost as an afterthought and Eddie considered his options. Considered the expansive home he now found himself in, the broken man before him in his comfort space surrounded by a violent amount of alcohol, and his own, still aching body.

“Yeah,” he replied and dumped his huge suitcases on the kitchen floor, following Richie into the room.

Richie poured him a glass of scotch, which threw him off because he can’t remember discussing his preferences, but scotch was something he always loved that his mother and, eventually, Myra, refused to let him have. Something about  _ livers _ and  _ habits _ .

He sipped it and tasted the age and the pricetag in one go, appreciating that Richie seemed to just have the bottle despite (according to the way the lid had popped when Richie pushed at the seal) never having been open.

Eddie inspected the numerous bottles of wine that were placed lovingly in racks. There seemed to be something akin to organization to them according to the way that the were set in seemingly random racks and placed far enough away from each other.

“That one’s your favorite,” he said, pointing to a bottle towards the far right hand corner. Richie glanced up from his phone to look at what Eddie was referring to. He was paused for far too long for it not to be an affirmative and Eddie smiled into his glass, his arm falling to his side.

“How did you know?” Richie asked, his tone jokingly smooth and seductive in a way that threw Eddie off ever time, even when they were kids.

“You have it the furthest away from anything else, and you have three bottles of it. It’s also only a 2015, so clearly not the oldest wine and it’s a zinfandel, which I know you like even though you’re embarrassed to admit you’re just a middle-aged mom.”

There is a beat of silence before Richie guffaws, sliding next to Eddie far too close and far too quickly for him to recover in time.

“Zinfandels are all the rage with the milfs. Your mom is a huge fan of them.” He sounds a little flat, a little forced, but when Eddie looks over at him he’s grinning and staring strangely at a corner of the room that has nothing to do with wine.

“Sure, yeah you and my mom get fucking wasted on your shitty twenty dollar zinfandels and plan your wedding. Shut the fuck up, Richie.”

“Oh, you saw those texts? We were trying to keep it a secret.”

Eddie digs his elbow into Richie’s side and doesn’t even sense the ache of mentioning his dead mother. She’d been dead for years before her passing. Eddie hadn’t talked to her until her death bed. He doesn’t mourn her much anymore.

“Beep beep, Richie.”

“Beep beep, yourself, Kaspbrak. Stop judging my taste in wine. Didn’t you hear that it’s 2016? Men are allowed to like wine now. It’s called ‘Mine’ and it’s my breakout project.”

It feels so fucking good to laugh. To hear jokes and be the butt-end of them even though he almost died. After Richie was able to get his head around what happened, they had fallen back into their normal banter. It had been comforting, comfortable. When Richie Tozier is telling jokes then all is well. When Eddie Kaspbrak isn’t actively dying, all is well.

The two of them retire into the so-called livingroom and Eddie has to fold his now shoeless feet under himself to feel at all comfortable. The couch is flawless in the way that no one has ever sat on it and the springs are new and harsh. Richie has been paying more attention to his phone than he had in all of the days in the hospital and Eddie lets him tap away at it as he finishes his glass of likely expensive scotch. It’s only when Richie lets out a long, frustrated sigh that Eddie says a thing.

“What, are all of your booty calls pissed that you ghosted them a week ago?” He asks, not entirely sure why he went down that particular well.

Richie looks like he wants to bounce off of that but then another  _ ding _ distracts him and he lets out a long groan, his head falling back against the top of the couch.

There’s an expanse of neck, dappled with unshaved facial hair and soft skin that Eddie can’t help but focus on between the painkillers and the alcohol. It dredges up a memory of Myra, face red with contempt, at finding his car outside of a local gay club.

He had gotten too-drunk and forgotten their linked locations on their phone. She had found him buried in the throat of some dude that had insulted his haircut and complimented his legs.

They’d had a long talk after that. Myra told him that, as long as he worked on his  _ affliction _ she wouldn’t call a lawyer. He, drunk out of his mind, had apologized a million times, heartbeat racing beyond any level of comfort and breath coming out too erratic. Shockingly, she had stood and watched him grovel instead of calling an ambulance for his shortness of breath and shaking fingertips. She had brought him back into her arms - he was still shaking, still thinking about those hands - and she had told him that she would always be here. She would always know and always put him right.

“ _ Eds _ -”

“Don’t call me that.” He said out of instinct and, as soon as he did, Richie’s mouth clamped shut. He was staring, the phone in his hand gone dark from disuse.

“Are you okay?” He asked, tentatively.

Eddie waved him off, pounding the last jigger or two of his scotch, and nodding.

“‘M fine.” He said after he’d swallowed around the burning. Richie watched him, carefully but never too careful. Eddie wished he had more liquor to swallow, but his throat was still clicking around his gag reflex and he knew that Richie knew he wasn’t exactly  _ fine _ .

But Richie bowed his head and opened his phone again.

“My agent is asking for tour date confirmations.” He says in lieu of any sort of follow up. Eddie finishes swallowing down his bile to nod, glancing at his empty tumbler.

“Are you still gonna do it?” He asked.

Richie shrugged, looking wildly at his phone.

“Seems stupid to, now.”

And he was the only one.

Eddie loved the Losers like he loved them before. They had been there for him then and now, but they had all just slipped back into normal life that neither he nor, apparently, Richie, were able to. And all that he wished that Richie could, he was grateful that someone still seemed to retain that bit of dissonance. It made everything seem more real. Like it had actually affected them. Sometimes he felt like he had been alone in that moment, in the hospital and at Niebolt from all the ways the rest of the Losers were sharing photos and anecdotes from their travels. He’s sure it has something to do with them removing themselves from the trauma, from the hurt, but it still felt like forgetting, even though he knew that wasn’t what it was about.

Richie, though… he knew Richie hadn’t forgotten.

In the moments that Richie had watched him, closely, on the plane to L.A. In the way that Richie had rested his hand on Eddie’s on the car ride home from the hospital, as if reassuring himself that this was real, that Eddie was alive and he was okay and he was safe.

He felt that now.

It didn’t feel like the overbearance of Myra or his mother. It didn’t feel like the beeps of hospital machines. It felt like a true and honest concern paired with a true and honest knowledge that Eddie could fend for himself, if needed. Richie kept himself at the distance that Eddie needed to know that he was not breakable. He wasn’t a porcelain doll. He was a grown man who had faced a demon clown  _ twice _ and survived.

Richie knew that and Richie reminded him of that in little moments every single time they were together.

Not that those times were abundant, but they were growing.

“I think you should,” Eddie found himself saying when Richie returned with the scotch bottle to refill his glass. “It could be good for you. Getting back into things. The rest of them are.”

Richie’s hand spasmed, sending scotch over Eddie’s hand. Neither of them mentioned it as Richie pulled the bottle back and set it on the coffee table and Eddie wiped his hand on his pants.

“Yeah but… I don’t know if I can. My set was… it was written for me because I couldn’t remember… most comics pull from their childhood, their bullies and fears and mistakes. I couldn’t remember those until last week. It feels so fake now.”

Eddie looked at him and hummed, not saying anything more. This felt like something that Richie had to figure out for himself. Eddie would be there, of course he would, but Richie’s career was something that Eddie only knew from cultural osmosis, from a quiet night spent hunched over his laptop after Myra had gone to sleep, watching Richie’s standup special and feeling strange and off-put by the show, not knowing why.

Now he wasn’t sure why Richie was staring at him, eyes slightly glossed over as if remembering something just as Eddie was but with a tinge of unhappiness, of regret, almost. Eddie used to be the most adept at reading Richie, but now his expressions had evolved and Eddie hadn’t been there to keep up with his lessons.

“Write your own, then.” He said and Richie frowned, looking at his phone again, though it was dark and blank.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can try.”

This was too honest, too open and Eddie felt flayed open by the exchange. He took a long swig of his scotch and said,

“Can’t be too much worse than before. That shit was fucking terrible.”

Richie seemed to settle.

“My writers are a bunch of fuckin’ jackasses. Girlfriend jokes are old news.”

Eddie swallowed around a rock in his throat before saying, “not that you ever had one of those to begin with.”

Richie was clamped shut tight once again, shoulders hunched too-high and jaw set.

“I-I… your mom seemed pretty fuckin’ into me.” He said, lamely, and Eddie could feel that it was a low fruit that he was desperately trying to feed to him. He let it happen.

“Fuck you, dude.” He murmured into his glass and, again, Richie relaxed.

They didn’t talk much for the rest of the night. Eddie had one more glass of scotch while Richie texted his agent and once sleep pulled on his eyelids he retired.

That night, he dreamt.

It was dark and cold and wet and Richie was bent over him, shaking feverishly. He wanted to reach up and hold him and warm him, but his arm wouldn’t move.

** _He’s gone, Richie! He’s gone! Your last chance is gone!_ **

The taunting voice of Pennywise made his blood boil and his hackles rise, but he still couldn’t move. He could feel Richie sob against him and he wanted to reassure him.  _ It’s okay, I’m alive. Don’t listen. _

** _You loved him and you lost him! How fitting! The trashmouth and the trash heap. He’s just flesh and bones now, Richie. He’s gone, Richie! He’s GONE!_ **

“He’s not fucking gone.” He heard a strangled and shaking voice above him. “He’s not gone, he’s not gone.”

** _You never told him your secret and now its buried with him! Six feet under where he belongs!_ **

He wants to move, he wants to yell and fight, but Richie is suddenly pulled away and he hears laughing and screams and shouts and he wants to move he wants to  _ fight _ . Then, the sobbing shouts are back, resonating through a crumbling cavern and he feels his body thrown around and jostled and there is so much  _ pain _ so much  _ hurt _ . He’s not dead, he’s not dead, he’s not

** _Dead_ ** .

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

_ Beep _

_ “Beep beep, Richie.” Eddie drawls, socked foot pressing against Richie’s jaw. Richie moves as if he’s going to bite Eddie’s toes, but he doesn’t. Eddie kind of wishes he would. The touches and the pushes and presses against him only giving him so much. He doesn’t know why he does it, just that it elicits some amount of reaction and that’s all he needs. _

_ Except it’s not all that he needs. _

_ He ignores the burning hole that is the judgemental gaze of Stanley Uris. Stan, the only one that has even an ounce of emotional intuition and whom he fears the most in these moments. He ignores it, even though he knows the gaze holds a truth. He’s not ready for that truth. _

_ “You wouldn’t have to beep me so much if you understood the sanctity of mine and your mom’s union-” _

_ “Beep BEEP, Richie!” _

_ But Eddie is laughing and the hammock is threatening to spill over from all of their rough housing and Eddie ignores the long-suffering sigh from a Stan-ward direction. Richie sticks out his tongue at Eddie and Eddie sticks out his tongue at Richie and Richie winks and Eddie flusters, trying to kick him even though he wants nothing more than that attention, he wants to feel it over and over again. He wants to be the center of it. _

_ “Fuck you, Richie!” _

_ “Fuck you, Edward!” _

Eddie awoke with a gasp.

The sheets of Richie’s expensive bedlinens were soaked with sweat and Eddie quickly scrambled out of them to avoid the inevitable cooling against his skin. His breath was quick and close to what he used to diagnose as an asthma attack but is more commonly known as an  _ anxiety _ attack. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out, even though his lungs were fighting against him. It took a few long minutes before he was anywhere near able to walk or understand where he was.

He was in Richie’s house. He was in L.A. The clown is dead. He was safe.

He stumbled out of the room, throat dry and in search for water.

The kitchen was hard to suss out. The organization didn’t make any sense and it took him far too long to find and acceptable container for water. Eventually he found a glass and gulped down as much liquid as he could.

A clearing of the throat made him nearly choke.

After a long bout of coughing and ignoring the  _ I’m sorry, oh fuck _ s, he eventually was able to turn around and face Richie, face full of concern and eyes set in that way that insomniatic eyes often are.

“I didn’t mean to make you choke.” Richie said after he was able to confirm that Eddie wasn’t going to die.

Eddie rolled his eyes and knocked back the rest of his glass of water to sooth his suddenly dry throat.

“Coulda fooled me,” he said, throat a little too hoarse and a little too accusatory. Richie frowned and opened a cupboard that contained far too many hydrogenated snack foods.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Eddie tried again. Richie huffed a laugh and stuffed a snack cookie in his mouth. “When could I ever?” He asked around a mouthful of crumbs. Eddie scrunched his nose and looked away. “I had a nightmare.” He said instead of the insult that had been waiting to surface.

Richie froze.

“About… about It?” He asked and he had swallowed his cookie, but the sleeve of them was still gripped in his hand, likely being crushed by the force of it.

“Yeah.” Eddie said, uncertain of how ready they were to discuss these things. Still, Richie leaned heavily against the counter and looked at him.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Richie frowned at him again and put another cookie in his mouth. He didn’t say anything and for some reason that was enough to prompt Eddie to start speaking.

“I think I remember Niebolt.”

Richie shrunk down low into himself, not replying at all.

“Was… was It using me against you?”

Richie’s eyes went misty and he set down the cookies.

“Um, yeah. I mean… you were my best friend,  _ are _ my best friend. Makes sense.” He says, though he sounds defensive suddenly. Closed off. Eddie pushes forward.

“It said something about a secret. Was that just… was it just me? I don’t know how much of it was real.”

He knew, realistically, that Richie could have denied everything. Written his dream off as just that - a dream. But something shifted in Richie suddenly and he stood, stock still, against the counter and refused to look at Eddie.

“During that summer I went to the arcade-”

“I know, I remember you talking about how good at Street Fighter you got-”

“Bowers showed up.”

Eddie shut up and realized that this was one of those moments that Richie was being truly and entirely serious.

“I’d been playing with his cousin - I didn’t know he was a Bowers until later. He was… I liked him a lot. I offered to pay for another game and Bowers showed up. He called me… he said that I was--” Richie swallowed thickly, still not making eye contact.

“He called me a faggot. In front of everyone. Accused me of trying to bone his cousin and I just-”

Richie pressed his hands under his glasses, into his eyes like he had in the hotel room.

“I ran to the park. It used the fucking Paul Bunyon statue to chase me around and tell me about… a secret. My secret. He kept singing this song. I hear it still, sometimes. It gets stuck in my head, which is so fucked up. I know he was just like… pulling on my fears. I wasn’t scared of things like you guys were. I wasn’t scared of like… getting fucking sick or a creepy painting or whatever. I had other things. Deeper things that he figured out. He used them again when we were in the well. When you… when you died.”

Richie’s whole body was shaking and Eddie wanted to-- what did he want to do? Comfort Richie? How? He felt like if he touched him he would shake into pieces. No. Eddie just listened. He didn’t say a word and he just listened. Richie was talking like there was no one else in the room and Eddie let him.

“He knew that I felt… different. That you were a weakness. He figured that out, somehow. I feel like he showed me again, every night. When you were in the hospital, whenever I would close my eyes I would see you, again, dead in that fucking well. On the ground in the mud. I couldn’t let myself believe you were okay because what if it was a trick? What if this whole thing is in my head and when I look at you you’re… I don’t know, covered in maggots or some shit? What if you tell me you hate… tell me you hate me or… I don’t know, think I’m sick or some shit. Eddie, that would destroy me.”

Richie was looking at his feet now. A slight step up from before and Eddie moved slightly so that Richie knew that he was listening, that he was real. He pushed his bare foot forward and watched as Richie flinched back.

“I’m real,” he said, hushed and serious. Richie was crying but he didn’t comment on it at all.

“I’m not dead and you’re not sick, Richie. I’m here. I’m in your house. I’m not… I’m not going anywhere.”

Richie sobbed suddenly and Eddie did what only came natural to him and he lurched forward, wrapping his arms around Richie. As soon as he made contact, Richie caved. He collapsed into Eddie and he cried and mumbled nonsense into his pajama shirt. Eddie just held him and said “I’m real, I’m here, I’m alive.” quietly into the side of Richie’s head.

After several long, long moments, Richie pulled away slightly, eyes trained on Eddie’s ear.

“You saw it then. You saw how he used you against me.” He said, quiet and careful. Eddie let out a long breath of air.

“Yeah.”

“So… you know. Bev knows, I’m sure of it. She knows things. She’s like a fucking psychic. She knew the second I pulled you out of the sewer.”

“What does she know, Rich?”

And Eddie was giving him a way out, a way to deny the whole thing because he did… if that dream had even an inkling of reality to it, he knew, too. He didn’t dare hope, though. Just in case it all fell apart. He couldn’t give himself the ability to hope.

“Eds…” Richie sounded like he was drowning and when Eddie looked at him, his eyes were so, so sad and his face had fallen like everything in the world had been taken from him.

“Eddie…” he repeated.

And then Eddie kissed him.

He wasn’t exactly sure why. He knew what he had heard in his dream and he was relatively sure it was closer to a memory than anything else, but a kiss is far from comforting and Richie was holding very, very still against him.

He pulled away and Richie’s face was drawn and hard.

“It’s me.” Eddie said, unsure of why but knowing that it was the right thing to say. Richie opened his eyes and  _ looked _ , really  _ looked _ at Eddie for the first time all evening.

“I know. I know and it’s okay. Me too. Me too.”

And then Richie cried. He cried these silent, quiet tears that spilled down his face and he looked in wonder at Eddie as if he wasn’t quite sure it could be true. Eddie pushed forward again and their mouths met and this time Richie responded, pressing against Eddie desperately, not able to ever let him go and Eddie… he was okay with that. It wasn’t overbearing or overprotective. Richie knew that he was capable of far more than anyone - including himself - let on. Richie trusted him, Richie respected and enjoyed him. Richie loved him, he was sure of it.

“I love you.”

And that was true, too.

He remembered a moment, _ _

_ squatting against the kissing bridge, side pressed against Richie’s in a way that would have gotten them sent to some conversion camp if anyone saw them. They were breathing hard, having just barely escaped the wrath of a Bowers gang member. Eddie looked over at his friend, breathing heavily but still smiling, still full of energy and excitement and he reached over and held his hand. Richie looked over at him, neck nearly snapping in how fast it turned. _

_ “Hey Eds, what the fuck are you doing?” _

_ “Holding your hand, dipshit, what does it look like?” _

_ Richie’s breathing was impossibly faster and in no time at all he was leaning over to press their mouths together. _

_ They hadn’t done much else, just laughed in astonishment at themselves, but Eddie had watched Richie carve their initials into the bridge and never said a thing about it. They didn’t talk about it again and soon afterwards Richie’s family moved and, despite the promises that they would never lose contact, he never heard from Richie again and it hurt so, so much until he, too, stepped outside of Derry and forgot. _

“I never stopped,” Richie said quietly against his shoulder after they had moved back onto the couch.

Eddie hummed, brushing his thumb against Richie’s knuckles and leaning his head against the mop of curls he had always wanted so badly to push his fingers into.

“Not once. I’d loved you for years and when I left I still loved you, even though I couldn’t remember.”

“I think I did, too.” Eddie said, quietly as if he could wake someone. “I always thought of you, or like… the ghost of you. Something like you. I wanted something that I couldn’t understand and it fucking  _ ate _ me alive, Richie. I was so goddamn empty.”

“Now, though?” Richie said, almost hopefully.

“I’m full, now.” Eddie replied and he let out a breath he’d been holding for twenty seven years.

“I love you, and I’m full, now.”


End file.
